preface
"Treat comrades as warmly as spring, work as fiery as summer, individualism as the autumn wind sweeping away leaves, and enemies as cruel and ruthless as a harsh winter."
On September 29, 1937, Ruyuekou was lost, and the flat type pass was self-defeating and difficult to defend. Jiang Yuzhen, commander of the 196th Brigade of the Kuomintang Jin Sui Army, received an order from his superiors: hold Yuanping for 7 days. On October 1, a large number of Japanese troops began to move south from Dai County, and soon surrounded Yuanping, and the two sides fought fiercely outside the city. The Japanese army occupied the advantage of numbers and equipment, and controlled the initiative of the battlefield, and after 7 days of fierce fighting between the two sides, the 196th Brigade of the Nationalist Army suffered heavy losses.
The 196th Brigade, which had planned to retreat as planned, received an order from its superiors: "Hold out for another 3 days!" Brigade Commander Jiang Yuzhen resolutely obeyed the order: "With my Jiang Yuzhen present, there is Yuan Ping, and I Jiang Yuzhen swear to coexist and die with Yuan Ping!" ”
The writer Cui Jizhe once described a battle scene in the battle of Yuanping in "The General Has No Head": the two sides fought fiercely, and the battle was fierce. The 196th Brigade soon had 200 wounded soldiers, and doctors and nurses were responsible for moving them to safety for treatment. On the way, the group was ambushed by the Japanese army, and after the Japanese surrounded them, the female nurses and doctors were all bullied and killed in a disemboweled, and the soldiers and officers were all beheaded alive.
We know that according to international practice, ambulance personnel are not allowed to kill at will on the battlefield, and captured personnel should also receive certain humanistic "preferential treatment". The actions of the Japanese army not only violated "international law", but were also very brutal, simply inferior to animals.
Jiang Yuzhen, who heard the news, was very angry, and he always believed that only by being more cruel and crazy than the Japanese army could he effectively deter the Japanese army, reason with them, and preach morality, which was simply "playing the piano to the cow." Jiang Yuzhen issued an order: "When encountering Japanese devils, all wounded soldiers will be shot, and they will retaliate with teeth for eyes, and the Japanese army must pay the blood debt and avenge the victims!" ”
What kind of person is Jiang Yuzhen? What kind of legend did his anti-Japanese career have? Let's take a look at it today.
Iron-blooded warrior
Jiang Yuzhen was born in 1894 to a poor peasant family in Xinji Village, Dongxinji, Heze City. Jiang Yuzhen was not only born poor, but also a bitter person, not yet born, his father died, and he was raised by his mother with hard work. Jiang Yuzhen grew up witnessing the tyrannical behavior of the great powers, especially the Japanese imperialists, in China, and hated in her heart the oppression of China and the Chinese people by the aggressors.
When she grew up, Jiang Yuzhen signed up to join the army with full of enthusiasm, hoping to save suffering China. In 1913, The Shaanxi Overseer Lu Jianzhang recruited soldiers, and Jiang Yuzhen was conscripted into the army and incorporated into the Shang Zhen Regiment. At this time, Jiang Yuzhen was just a "reserve soldier". In the autumn of 1916, he followed Shang Zhen to the Shanxi overseer Yan Xishan.
Jiang Yuzhen is a hot-blooded boy with ideals and ambitions, and he did not serve as a soldier to eat a mixed meal, but to "help save a suffering China". Therefore, when Jiang Yuzhen was training as a new recruit, she was very diligent and hardworking, and soon stood out from the recruits and was appreciated by the commander. In order to train Jiang Yuzhen, his superiors sent him to study at the Cadre School of the First Brigade of the Shanxi Army in 1917.
After graduation, Jiang Yuzhen successively served as a platoon commander, company commander, battalion commander, and regiment commander; Jiang Yuzhen led the soldiers, subdued people with talent and virtue, loved the soldiers, and must be a pioneer in every battle, and was both wise and courageous, deeply supported by soldiers and appreciated by superiors, and had the reputation of "fierce general" in the army.
Jiang Yuzhen participated in several major battles with the Jin army, and each battle he had to go to the front line in person, and he was a pioneer, and once cut off a lung due to a bullet in the chest in one battle. Because of his bravery and good fighting, he won the title of "fierce general" in the Jin army and was promoted to brigade commander of the 196th Brigade of the 65th Division of the 66th Army.
After the Northern Expedition, Jiang Yuzhen entered the Kuomintang Central Officers School to study, and after graduating, he became the colonel of the Third Regiment of the 32nd Division of the Shanxi Army. He was awarded the rank of Major General in 1935. After the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he was promoted to brigade commander of the 196th Brigade of the 66th Division of the Jin Sui Army, stationed in Yangquan, Shanxi, and concurrently served as the commander of the Shitai Railway Repair.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese army launched the "July 7 Incident" and launched a full-scale war of aggression against China. Jiang Yuzhen bid farewell to his old mother and wife, and led the 196th Brigade from Yangquan, Shanxi, to Niangziguan to participate in the anti-Japanese resistance. The situation on the battlefield was changing rapidly, and in early September, the Japanese army launched a large-scale attack on northwestern Shanxi, Datong was in danger, and the 196th Brigade was ordered to rescue Datong, and just arrived in Datong, Datong had already fallen. The 196th Brigade retreated south to Chengxian County, and received orders to hold yuanping, and the 196th brigade immediately rushed to yuanping.
Jiang Yuzhen was very strict with his subordinates, strictly prohibiting the harassment of the people, and those who violated the order were beheaded. A soldier once took a pair of ordinary people's shoes privately and was shot. At the same time, Jiang Yuzhen also loved the soldiers, gave up his war horse to the sick trumpet, and was able to eat and sleep with the soldiers, without specialization, and the soldiers admired him.
Why was the 196th Brigade sent to Yuanping to die? The reason was the need for the battlefield at that time, when the Japanese army dispatched more than 70,000 people, more than 150 tanks, and 250 artillery pieces, from the north of Shanxi to Taiyuan, which was in danger. In order to preserve Taiyuan, the Second Theater decided to send 80,000 Chinese troops to defend Xinkou, but these troops were far away in Hebei Province and other parts of Shanxi Province, and it would take time to deploy.
At this time, the Japanese army was only more than 80 kilometers away from Xinkou, and it was mechanized, and the speed of the march was very fast, and it would take several days for the Chinese troops sent to Xinkou to arrive. In order to buy time, it is necessary to first send a troop to garrison the town of Yuanping, 15 kilometers north of Xinkou, to stop the enemy at all costs, drag the enemy there, and buy time for the nationalist army to deploy at Xinkou.
The 196th Brigade was a strong brigade of the first kind, the elite of the Jin Sui Army, and Jiang Yuzhen was a tiger general. Therefore, they were sent to Yuanping to block the Japanese army, Jiang Yuzhen naturally knew the importance and arduousness of the task, and when mobilizing before the war, he said: "Whoever dares to retreat from the military law, I Jiang Yuzhen retreat, everyone can be blamed." ”
As the saying goes, "There will be a will to die, and there will be no greed for life." "Such an army is blocked, and the Japanese army is doomed to suffer." After Jiang Yuzhen was assigned the task, he first used the empty city to hesitate the Japanese army, on October 1, the Japanese army did not arrive, and on October 2, the Japanese reconnaissance plane flew over Yuanping and saw an "empty city".
The Japanese army, which was afraid of being ambushed, sent agents to yuanping under the leadership of the traitor to investigate and collect reliable intelligence, only to be captured by Jiang Yuzhen's troops, who ordered the murder of this traitor and agent, cut off his head and hung it on the city wall, and declared to the Japanese army the determination of "death battle".
The Japanese did not rush to attack, and on October 3, the Japanese sent a cavalry squadron to the town of Yuanping, but they were ambushed and dozens of people were killed. The Japanese army, which had discovered the truth, began a fierce attack, and the Independent Fifteenth Brigade of the Japanese Army, under the cover of aircraft, artillery and tanks, fought with the 196th Brigade outside the city of Yuanping.
Jiang Yuzhen led his troops to fight with the Japanese army for positions during the day, organized death squads to sneak attack the Japanese army at night, and after the loss of the position outside the city, Jiang Yuzhen led his troops to retreat into the plain city, and the Japanese army used cannons to blast open the city wall, organizing the Japanese army to launch wave after wave of group charges, repeatedly consuming the strength of the 196 Brigade that withdrew into the city. The Chinese defenders suffered heavy casualties and ran out of ammunition, and in the fierce street battles, the officers and soldiers who were still alive fought repeatedly in every street and in every courtyard.
During the battle, there was an incident in which Chinese medical personnel and wounded soldiers were brutally insulted and tortured by the Japanese army, Jiang Yuzhen was indignant, on the one hand, he ordered that the escort of the wounded should be sent to the death squad later, if there is no death squad, the wounded will no longer be evacuated, and everyone will fight with the Japanese army. On the other hand, he ordered a tit-for-tat, and all wounded soldiers of the Japanese army were executed without leaving a living mouth.
The Japanese army, with full advantage, had not yet captured Xinkou on October 7, and Jiang Yuzhen completed the task of blocking the attack well, wanting to retreat according to the original plan, and again received the order to hold on to the 3rd. Jiang Yuzhen's army was only left with more than 600 people (including wounded soldiers), and the ammunition was almost exhausted, but all the officers and men of the 196th Brigade did not complain, and were ordered to hold out and engage in street battles with the Japanese troops who broke into the city.
On October 8, the Japanese mobilized more aircraft, artillery and tanks to attack and bomb the city, and more Japanese troops entered the city to carry out searches and killings. The battle of the remaining soldiers of the 196th Brigade was unusually difficult and brutal. On the evening of October 9, Jiang Yuzhen organized an 80-man death squad to launch an active attack on the Japanese army to confuse the Japanese army, and none of the 80 brave soldiers survived.
On October 10, Jiang Yuzhen went into battle shirtless, carrying a short gun, and must be a pioneer in every battle, carrying grenades and charging with soldiers. At the last moment, the only people who stayed in the city with Jiang Yuzhen were Huang Hongyou, the platoon leader of the special agent platoon, and a few soldiers, several people insisted on staying in a courtyard, besieging more and more Japanese troops, and every close melee, some people fell... On the night of the 10th, the blockade task was completed, Jiang Yuzhen led the special service platoon to prepare to break through the retreat from the passage dug in advance, and when it reached the outside of the city, a shell fell on Jiang Yuzhen's side and exploded, Jiang Yuzhen was injured by the explosion, and he lost too much blood and went into shock.
The Japanese troops who caught up with him learned from his uniform that Jiang Yuzhen was the commander of the nationalist army guarding the city, and would stab him continuously with a bayonet, and after Jiang Yuzhen was sacrificed, the Japanese army cut off his head and took him away.
Huang Hongyou, a platoon leader of the special agent platoon, once led the soldiers to risk death to return to find the body of the brigade commander, but he did not get it and cried unceasingly. After the Japanese army identified it as the brigade commander of the Chinese army holding the original Pingcheng Castle, they dragged Jiang Yuzhen's body away and cut off his head.
epilogue
The 196th Brigade killed nearly a thousand Japanese troops on the 10th of the 10th day of the bloody battle in Yuanping, killed and wounded the whole brigade, most of them were sacrificed, and the anti-Japanese feats were earth-shattering, the sun and the moon were sad, and the world admired them!
After Brigadier Jiang Yuzhen was martyred, mourning was held in different forms throughout the country. Mao Zedong, chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, praised Jiang Yuzhen and others for "giving the whole Chinese people a lofty and great model." The Kuomintang government also issued explicit praise and posthumously awarded it to lieutenant generals. In June 1979, the Shandong Provincial People's Government posthumously recognized Jiang Yuzhen as a revolutionary martyr. The martyr's hometown, Xin Ji, built a monument for General Jiang Yuzhen to be homaged. There are statues in the martyrs' cemetery in Heze City, Shandong Province.